Hal
Hi Louis, hope all the wedding prep is going well. Mum and I are thinking of you both. Look forward to seeing you! Dad xx
And hope that I’m making the right call.
21
SARAH
I keep forgetting where I am. I wake several times during the night, my skin sticky, my hand sore where the IV is feeding me antibiotics. I’m on some incredible painkillers – my leg is hardly aching at all – but they blur the edges of reality, making everything seem even stranger than it already is.
According to the doctor, I am lucky. Well, both lucky and stupid, if you read between the lines. Stupid not to have sought medical help more quickly, lucky that I passed out when I did. I have an infection, but it hadn’t become deadly. ‘Another few hours,’ he told me gravely, ‘and it might have been a catastrophe.’
I wanted to tell him that it felt like a catastrophe from where I’m lying. I’m stuck in hospital, I’ve ruined Hal’s trip and I might not make my son’s wedding. But I suppose as a doctor, you see a lot worse. Everything’s relative.
Hal had to go home last night – visiting hours are strictly adhered to. But he’d called me on the phone in my room, after checking with the nurses that I was awake.
‘I was so worried about you,’ he told me. ‘I wish you’d said something.’
‘You know me. I was trying to push through it.’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have to. Pushing through it is what people do when they’re alone.’
‘But Iamalone, I mean I know I was with you, but we’re not… you know. You don’t owe me anything.’
‘Well, that’s a pile of crap.’ His blunt expression took me by surprise, and I had to struggle not to laugh.
‘What do you mean?’
‘First of all, you’re not alone. I’m here and I don’t just mean physically. I know things have been up and down with us over the years, but you’re an important person in my life, Sarah. You always will be. And maybe I didn’t show you that, or make you feel you could call on me. But I’m here. And I will be here, OK?’
‘OK,’ I said, chastened.
‘And you say I don’t owe you anything? I owe you everything. Sarah, you gave me Louis. Yeah, maybe the whole pregnancy thing seemed like a bit of a nightmare at the time. But now… well, it’s pretty obvious he was the best thing that ever happened to me. The best thing I’ve ever created.’
‘What, better than Solve-It 2.0, extended edition?’
He laughed. ‘I can’t believe you even know the name of that.’
We spoke a little more; how hopefully he’d talk the doctors into letting me out tomorrow morning if I was well enough. How we’d speed through France and still get to the wedding on time. Then, just before he ended the call, he told me that Peter had sent his best.
‘Peter called you?’
‘No, he called you. I have your phone, somehow. Anyway, I got him up to speed and I hope it’s OK, but I told him he didn’t need to come.’
‘Oh God. Thank you. No, that would be… that’s really not necessary.’
‘And he’s looking forward to your date,’ Hal finished.
‘Oh,’ I managed.
But Hal changed the subject. Eventually we said goodbye, him promising to be there in visiting hours.
‘You don’t have to, you know,’ I found myself saying.
‘Sarah?’ he said.
‘Yes?’
